


The Helicopter

by shewhoguards



Category: Top Gear (UK)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, post-accident
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-24
Updated: 2009-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-05 04:08:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/37649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shewhoguards/pseuds/shewhoguards
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"We should get him a gift," James said decisively. "Flowers or something. Chocolates."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Helicopter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [timberwolfoz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/timberwolfoz/gifts).



  
"We should get him a gift," James said decisively. "Flowers or something. Chocolates."

  
  


It hadn't taken long after Richard had woken up for the nurses to gently but firmly remove them from the room. Something about them over-exciting him. It left them in the hospital cafeteria, drinking bad tea and trying not to remember how pale and fragile he had seemed, how dazed when they talked at him.

  
  


It was a lot easier to talk about gifts than brain damage.

  
  


"Flowers?" Jeremy grimaced at him. "May, Hammond might have stupid hair, but he's not a girl."

  
  


"Well_, something_," James persisted. "He's ill, you get him a gift. It's what workmates do."

  
  


Jeremy made a face, but seemed to consider. "Do you think they're going to let us back in?"

  
  


"After you borrowed that motorised wheelchair, whizzed it around the room and crashed it into those monitors? Almost certainly not until there's a shift-change."

  
  


"It's not as though you can get any decent speed up on one of those things," Jeremy said defensively, but stood up. "Fine, come on then. We'll go shopping."

  
  


***

  
  


"A car. One of those stupid little ones he likes, where he can reach the pedals without sitting on a cushion."

  
  


It was an automatic suggestion, but James had to be the one to turn it down. "He might not be driving again for a while, they said."

  
  


_Or ever_. The unspoken addition hung between them awkwardly for a few moments before Jeremy cleared his throat. "A chainsaw then."

  
  


"Why would he want a chainsaw?"

  
  


_"I'd _like a chainsaw," Jeremy said, as though that made it obvious.

  
  


"You're a maniac," James said calmly. "How about lego? Or a book?"

  
  


"We're trying to cheer him up, not make him die of boredom."

  
  


***

  
  


In the end, the only gift they could both agree on was a remote control helicopter. It was cool, it was technical, and Richard could use it without expending too much energy. He could even, Jeremy said with enthusiasm, fly it around the hospital ward, although that possibility seemed slightly less likely when they realised that the box was large and heavy enough to require both of them to carry it out to the car.

  
  


The nurses seemed less than thrilled when they brought it into the hospital however. "You'd have thought they'd be _happy,"_ Jeremy complained. "They _said _it was good for him to be kept entertained."

  
  


"I think they meant more.. talk to him, read to him, that kind of thing," James said vaguely, trying to maneuver the box around a trolley. "Oops, sorry!"

  
  


Jeremy snorted. "If you read to _me_ when I was stuck in a hospital bed, I think I'd prefer to just slip back into a coma."

  
  


"Maybe he can read the instructions," James said, and paused with some relief as they reached the door of Richard's room, waiting for Jeremy to knock.

  
  


Of course, Jeremy bothered which no such niceties, barging in with little care for who was already there. "Hey, Hamster, guess what we brought you?"

  
  


***

  
  


Richard's reaction was not so much disappointing as terrifying. He said thank you quietly -- or at least he said _something _in a voice too small to really make out, and then seemed to drift off, letting the conversation of the other two pass over his head until even that petered out and they sat in awkward silence, trying not to look at each other in case their eyes asked the question of whether things could ever be normal again.

  
  


In desperation, needing _something _to do that wasn't pretending that things were perfectly all right, Jeremy started to open the helicopter box. He'd almost got it working when the nurses kicked them out again.

  
  


***

  
  


"We should test it."

  
  


"Why should we test it?" James asked. _"_It's _his _gift."

  
  


"And they won't let him use it in there," Jeremy said, "and by the time he gets to it'll be a bit late, won't it? Here's your 'Get Well Soon' gift, Hammond, so sorry it doesn't work, we'd get you another, but you're not ill anymore now."

  
  


"We couldn't anyway," James said, ever the practical one. "It was the last in the shop."

  
  


"Yeah well. You get the idea."

  
  


They walked in silence for a while before James surrendered. "Fine, we'll test it. Just let me read the instructions first, and don't act like a loon with it as you usually do."

  
  


Jeremy had it halfway out of the box before he'd even finished speaking.

  
  


***

  
  


"You've broken it, haven't you? You pillock."

  
  


_"I _haven't broken it," Jeremy said sullenly. "The tree broke it."

  
  


"The tree you just happened to steer it into while chasing that seagull? _Now _what are we going to do?"

  
  


In silence, the pair studied the broken propeller. It had shattered on impact with the tree, one blade breaking off entirely. Somehow, Jeremy had managed to snap the other two while trying to untangle it from the tree's branches.

  
  


He'd also fallen out of the tree, but James had been less than sympathetic about that.

  
  


"We could tape it," Jeremy suggested, after a few minutes, "or weld it."

  
  


James gave him a withering look. "I should think he'd notice. We'll just have to buy him a new one."

  
  


"We can't," Jeremy said, subdued. "Last in the shop, remember?"

  
  


James sighed. "We'll just have to buy him something else, and explain what happened."

  
  


***

  
  


"Maybe we won't have to confess," Jeremy said hopefully, as they returned to the hospital carrying the less cool, but also less breakable, gift of chocolates. "He's got amnesia, hasn't he? Maybe he just won't remember he ever had a helicopter."

  
  


It was the sort of thing they might usually have had a laugh about, but today James hesitated. "Hope he does."

  
  


It made Jeremy pause, remembering unwillingly how Richard looked in there; the pale face, the unfocused eyes, the sneaking terror that things might never be quite the same again. His shoulders sagged. "Yeah," he agreed unwillingly. "Hope he does."

  
  


The silence dragged, mournful and slow, before he brightened again. "We'll say it got confiscated then?"

  
  


James considered. "Yeah," he agreed. "That'll do." 

  
  



End file.
